


Drinking Alone Together

by CopperCaravan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Study, Fenera Mahariel, Gen, Introspection, Spoilers for Blackwall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 16:18:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5877409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Blackwall's deception is uncovered and his judgement passed at Skyhold, Mahariel has a drink.<br/>Follow up to "A Line in the Sand Between You and Me."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drinking Alone Together

In the end, Mahariel’s what makes the difference and she thinks that, somehow, she must’ve known all along that it would be this way.

She’s the _real_ Grey Warden after all; what would they have her do with the offender?

Sure, the advisors bicker and the Inquisitor considers and her band of companions offers opinions and arguments and forgiveness, but in the end, with the jury divided on Rainer’s fate, Mahariel is the one given the final word.

And the word is _pardon_.

“Why’d you do it?” He asks her later, in the young hours of the morning when Cabot’s kicked most of his patrons out of the bar.

All she wants— _all_ she wants—is to climb up the ramparts to her room, bury herself in blankets and pillows and Nathaniel’s body heat, and not think about the Wardens and all they lost—all _she_ lost. But of course she can’t. Of course she’s been drinking this piss-ale all night, shooed off everyone who tried to get her to take it easy on the booze. And it’s been weeks since Adamant, weeks since...

And then fucking Blackwall. Fucking Rainer. Fucking whoever he is. He just trots off to Orlais, to a damned execution like he thought they wouldn’t go after him. Like he thought they weren’t going to save his stupid ass and drag him back to Skyhold.

Mahariel has her own friends, her own family, her own little self-made clan; she’s not part of _this,_ not part of Skyhold. But he is. And she knew, the moment Blackwall went missing, of course she knew they’d go after him. It pissed her off that he didn’t know. It pissed her off more that he’d actually expected the Inquisitor to leave him to a traitor’s death, even if he did deserve it.

And he did. He deserved it. She knew he did.

If it had been _her_ family he’d killed, he’d never have made it to a gallows. She’d have killed him. Brutal. Bloody. Merciless. Slow. She’d have lost herself in killing him, far more than she had when she’d slaughtered that Darkspawn in the Western Approach. And the people left behind—the people who loved the people Rainier killed—they deserve justice, vengeance. They do. But they won’t get it because of Blackwall, because of the Inquisition, and because of her.

The difference—what has been the difference since she was granted the power to make such decisions, all those years ago—is that she’s not like Blackwall. He’s a _good man_ and she’s just weary. The reason those people will never get justice, the reason Rainier isn’t swinging from a noose, is that he didn’t kill _her_ people, that his lie didn’t hurt _her._ It’s selfish and it’s wrong but it’s true and she’s far too tired to bother pretending she’s sorry for it.

But that’s not what he’s asking. She’s not the only one who had a hand in securing his freedom. The Inquisitor, Leliana, Sera, even Cullen. They all helped and, at the core of it all, it was because they weren’t wronged, not really. A lie like a name is nothing like a murder. Not this time, anyway.

No, what he’s asking...

“I didn’t conscript you,” she says. “Because you don’t deserve to be a Warden.”

The exhale is like all the air’s been let out of him, all hope of her forgiveness loosed like smoke and wafting to the sky, no way to hold it or pull it back down.

“No one deserves to be a Warden, I think,” she explains, but the hurt—the sting of rejection and petty vengeances—that’s already happened and she’d wanted it to be that way, wanted to prick him, at least a bit, for the lie he told over and over and over again while she watched her brothers and sister die. While he claimed ownership of a hurt that wasn’t his.

Cabot passes her a last drink and then throws up his hand, retires to his room. He’s done serving her; if she wants to stew at the bar that’s her business, long as she doesn’t make a mess.

“I don’t blame you at all,” he says, hands fidgeting on the bar. “I’d not want to associate with a man like me either.”

“I don’t care what you did.” She doesn’t even look at him, hasn’t looked at him since he’d come in, because it’s true: she doesn’t fucking care; they weren’t her people. “I knew you weren’t the Constable. Never met him, myself, but I knew right off that you weren’t a Warden.”

He’s about to ask her how. She can practically feel the question in the air. So she answers before he can dare. “You wouldn’t understand.”

He’s quiet for a while, and she certainly isn’t jumping to fill in the empty space. So she drinks. She’s been here for hours, nursing mugs and bottles, drinking so slowly she’s barely even buzzed. Drinks aren’t going to solve this problem—hell, drinks never seem to really solve any of her problems. They only help her forget them for a while.

“Still,” he finally says. “You didn’t have to let me off easy, didn’t have to stop them shipping me off to Wiesshaupt, didn’t have to do a thing. So why’d you do it?”

There is something in her, Mahariel knows. Something that makes her more loyal than moral; it’d have been there whether she’d been a Warden or not. If she’d never took her Joining, if she’d never lost Tamlen and her life in that cave—she’d still be the same woman, still hard and protective and fierce and more concerned with who and what is hers than with the rest of the world. Becoming a Warden didn’t change that, didn’t make her that, but it did speed things up. Wardens live fast and die quick, even in times of peace. It is no wonder she is so tired, even still so young as she is.

If things had been different—if even one more Warden had died or if Blackwall had said the wrong thing one too many times, if she’d known the people he’d killed or hadn’t burned innocents in Amaranthine, if he hadn’t been exactly the man he is and she not exactly the woman—Thom Rainer would be dead.

“Circumstance,” she says honestly. It is perhaps not the answer he expected, certainly not the answer he wanted, but it’s true. He can accept it or not.

She’d never take it back, never trade the life she’s had or the people she’s loved because of it. It’s too late: she’s lived it already and as much as she despairs, she finds joy. But it isn’t too late for him, for Blackwall, or Rainer, or whoever he chooses to be. He still has a choice and she’ll not be to him what that mirror was to her.

“Purely circumstance.”


End file.
